


Meant to be Broken (With Stuckony Fixit)

by TrashyTime



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: 2012!AU, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Canon Divergence - Post-Avengers (2012), Hurt Bucky Barnes, M/M, Mostly Gen, Pre-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Protective Tony Stark, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:33:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23436994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrashyTime/pseuds/TrashyTime
Summary: When Bucky remembers killing Howard, he also remembers who Howard was. His friend, whom he saw as a little brother, during the war. This goes about as well as you expect for him.In the 2012!Timeline, however, Bucky is very much not alone, when he remembers. What was a moment of breaking, instead becomes a moment of healing.---Literally started as an angst headcanon blurb. Then everyone on the Stuckony discord server made puppydog eyes at me till I filled it with 700 words of hurt and 1300 words of comfort.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, James "Bucky" Barnes/Tony Stark, Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 5
Kudos: 119
Collections: God Bless America





	1. The Original Flavor

**Author's Note:**

> First chapter is technically hurt no comfort- 2nd chapter is stuckony and hopefully gives all the comfort.

When he remembers who Howard was, it happens in a small broken bathroom in Hungary. There is no running water and he has been holed up in the top floor of this condemned building for a week. The headaches and memories have been coming like blows. He’s relived torture that turns his stomach and felt echos of crimes drifting under and over and through his hands like the ghosts that should be spitting on his grave. 

In the time it all unfolds, he can just barely wrap his head around the fact that he is Bucky, James Buchanan Barnes, and not the Asset. And it is as if the memory of that one target that knew his name, that called to him and asked him to help his wife- that knew his name and stared up with eyes too young for such an old face, that one memory from all of them, unmakes him utterly. 

The pain, the torture, the horror, has no place. Nothing consumes him, more than HYDRA already had, the Asset like a shell protecting him even as he is falling through so many memories. But those eyes, so young- that face, that voice, familiar and not. Calling his name. Calling him, something like wonder. Something like recognition. Something Bucky can barely grasp until it breaks across his mind like a hand grenade into a chinashop. He crushes cracked and stained porcelain, as the previous night’s MREs make their way up through him, even as he can not stop remembering. 

Like each beautiful cup and plate, new memories crash apart under the shockwave, the shards all slicing through him. Howard. The old man was Howard Stark.

The mission. But he knew Howard. 

He knew the man that flew Stevie into enemy airspace on a fool’s errand. Who gave Steve the chance to come save all those men in Azzano after everyone else had written them off as dead. 

He knew the man that shared a wry smile and his own whiskey, as Bucky nursed his own inner feelings. 

He knew the man, the boy playing at being a man, who got so affronted even as he smiled. The memory of teasing. Of dragging Howie under his arm to rub that hair and muss that “dead rat that crawled onta yer lip” as the smaller man squawked and laughed while trying to fix his mustache. 

Feeling so grateful for that damn target of a shield as it saved Steve’s life for the third time in as many minutes. Remembered feeling relieved as Howard had so seriously nodded, eyes wide and thinking of a million innovations as Bucky pointed out weaknesses and ways Steve moved in his new body. As he worked with him to keep Stevie safe. 

As he wasn’t alone in that all consuming task. How he had felt that Howard was his- in a way unlike Steve. A similarity. Someone else that looked at the sun that was Steve, felt that warmth, and needed to protect it.

Remembered the frizzling shared energy of how Howard went and made marvel after wonder for them just to keep them all safe. Not for praise, but because he needed to. 

Needed to do his part, even as he pretended he didn’t have to. 

And Bucky tried to bring up bile that burned in his nose and seared from his eyes as he remembers the feel of Howie’s head giving on the third bashing motion. Because at the same time as he can feel that- he can also feel the other man laughing, drunk and leaning into his side as he talks about always having wanted a brother.

Bucky can’t stop the tears, nor the retching, alone and as stained and broken as the hole he had crawled into. 

Bucky didn’t want to stop. Didn’t deserve to stop. This- dark, alone, stinking of bile and mildew and pain and horror- was the least he deserved. He has the blood of his little brother on his hands. 

When he meets Tony, all he can see is Howard, and feel the bile of that lonely night in a collapsing building. When Tony lashes out, Bucky takes it as his due. He wants to live to repay the debts he owes… but he deserves this. He deserves that hate. Because all he is, is a stained and broken shadow of what he once was. 

It never could have been anything else.


	2. The Stuckony Fixit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Technically this fixit is more Winteriron than Stuckony- mostly since Tony is more relaxing for Bucky than Steve. Bucky still feels he has to try to be strong for Steve. 
> 
> Older Tony allows him to set that burden down, even if just unconsciously. As such at night Bucky sleeps with Tony, especially of late when all these memories keep coming up like the worst kind of nightmares.

Or could it?

Playing out the same moments of memory in another timeline, one where Loki escaped with the Tesseract and Steve learned Bucky was alive and in HYDRA control. A timeline where Tony and Steve and Thor learned dire truths and fought to liberate the still frozen Asset, memories still came back with the same force. 

Bucky woke from a doze, the last week had been hell, barely functioning even with the clever pain management Tony had come up with for him. He was always there, holding his hand and brushing back his hair with calloused fingers. The nightlight in his chest so comforting when Bucky would numbly tell him about whatever new nightmare had shaken free. Steve, he had to protect. Especially from himself.

But Tony, Tony was older. Tony was so strong, made of iron but choosing softness. Memories began to tumble through him, he remembered a target- a… He felt his stomach all at once lurch, as he remembered Howard. He scrambled from the bed, head pounding and copper filling his mouth as he bolted away from the safety of the bed and half into the horrors of his mind.

In the master bathroom, Bucky collapses to kneel before the titanium commode, the thick bath mat fuzzy and warm under his knees as his stomach wins against his gagging. Tony is there by the second retching, gagging pulse, gathering up his hair. That soft murmuring to keep him grounded smoothing over his ears with the same gentleness as that broad hand does along his spine. He doesn’t even realize tears and sobs are coming around the gagging, until Tony is pressing his scarred chest and that round hard reactor to his back, his own arms both around the biceps of Bucky’s, where Bucky is gripping the metal hard enough that he is denting the metal slightly. 

He feels cradled. He feels safe. And as he remembers the feel of Howard’s skull giving under his hand, he screams out a sob, trembling almost violently as he wants to deny it, to make it not real. To run away from Tony and at the same time never tell him. To keep this. To be held, just like this. 

He is sobbing, stomach empty of even bile, and each soothing murmur and rubbing hand is desperately needed, but also like a grating wrongness- because he deserves none of it. Tony has the small cup for him, holding it to his lips to coax him to rinse, and Bucky can’t even remember when the other man shifted. He can’t remember it, but he can feel his own hands white knuckled onto the warmed commode. He can feel the soft bath mat, and acres of skin pressing to his own to remind him he isn’t alone. His nose is running and he wants to tell Tony he loves him and beg him not to leave. 

He wants to tell him he should kill Bucky. He doesn’t deserve him. He wants to just scream and beg it all to not be real memories. He wants to be weak. He wants to be allowed that. Instead he grabs the shreds of himself, of every scrap of his courage, and squeezes his eyes shut. His voice is ragged and broken, like he feels he should be inside. 

“It- it wasn’t, an accident. I just- I just remembered Howard- I. He wasn’t drunk. There was serum in the trunk. And he recognized me. The orders were to eliminate all witnesses and retrieve the serum. Tony. I, I killed Howie- I… I killed him and his wife, yer ma, and- I, I remember it- him, I, I’m so sorry.” The words stutter and stumble out, crashing into each other like that car into the tree- like- he squeezes his eyes even tighter as he curls forward.

He expects to be shoved away, as a messy sob shakes it’s way through him he moves to start curling forward again, hands releasing from the metal to press across his sides in a self hug. But he never manages to curl down to the ground because Tony is there, pulling and guiding Bucky’s wet face into his shoulder. That broad strong shoulder that smells of safety and warm spices. That always has ozone and coconuts and something purely Tony in it. He breathes it in, shuddering and shaking, wanting to be held too much to question it, even as he feels disgusting, that softness is pulling him in. Those warm hands, so strong, cradling him as if he is precious. 

As if he isn’t the killer and monster that killed the other man’s parents. Tony’s own voice is slightly shaken, but his lips press to Bucky’s temple softly, the pressure steadily firm. “No, baby, no, there is nothing at all to be sorry for. You told me.” he begins to gently rock them both, kneeling and curled up in the bathroom, soft glowing lights dim enough everything looks softened, the nighttime setting for the lights intended to allow them to go back to sleep if they wake in the middle of the night with needs that require this room’s use. 

Bucky’s mind sort of trips over the idea, of just how much Tony does for him, of how soft the whole world, every moment is made for him, safe in this haven that is the only home he has known since a tiny tenement with a too skinny punk, a thousand lifetimes ago. It’s dazed, like noticing blood under his nails in the foxholes. The sort of thing that means he’s overloaded, overwhelmed, in that space of shutting down and functioning anyways. 

“But I did it. These hands did it. My body did it.” the words tumble out, and more tears join the wetness smearing that shoulder, fresh burning in his nose and tightening in his chest. “He called out to me, recognized me as his friend, and I killed him.” Tony’s arms got even tighter, pressing as they held him close, but he just kissed Bucky’s temple again, 

The words, when they came, were pressed to Bucky’s skin, to his hairline and ghosting down across his ear, grounding in a way no shouting could be. “He was your friend. But you didn’t kill him.” He pressed another kiss to that sweat damp temple, a bit more dampness trickling from his own skin to join the wet trails on Bucky’s cheeks, but he continued on so strong as he held Bucky.

“HYDRA killed him. You had no control, no choice, no autonomy or memories. You, the you you are rediscovering, cried like _you_ were the one dying.” Tony ran his hand up along Bucky’s back and brushed gently over the fine hairs at the nape of his neck, cupping him there with a gentle and grounding pressure. 

Tony swallowed hard and continued, whispering the words to Bucky. “You screamed and cried more from remembering being used to kill Howard, than you did from the memory of being partially vivisected, so excuse me if I think that means more to me right now than a loss that happened so long ago.” His voice firmed a little, and he pulls his head back to kiss over Bucky’s forehead again, the damp scratch of goatee making Bucky shudder and look up into those serious eyes. That they both were crying, in a way eased something in Bucky. “Please don’t try to tell me that just because HYDRA killed my father, that somehow I should blame you.” Bucky shakes, the words feeling like blows. He wants to deny them, wants to argue, but he’s so broken apart inside, so tired, all he can do is accept them.

So he stays curled in those strong arms, safe and able to be soft and weak and broken and cared for. Able to be pulled slowly back together with soft kisses after the tears are all worn out. 

The tears aren’t gone for good, but by the time he sees Steve in the morning, when he tells Steve about the new memories- he doesn’t say he killed Howie… he says HYDRA killed Howie, and admits that he is struggling with the memories of it. 

And if they both cry together, leaning on one another, arms tangled around each other, well, that’s a good change too. Because maybe, just maybe, the best part of the future, is leaning on each other, and trusting each other to lean back in too. To be there for each other, sharing the load, instead of only one of them carrying everything.

**Author's Note:**

> This is why I should never be allowed out on Discord. Also I need an active Witcher!Server with Bingo cards and Sprints. Dang it. 
> 
> Reminder- I am still a Marvel nerd. I have Bucky cards. If you only like The Witcher- I am so sorry. 
> 
> Tears and screams and flailing all feed my soul- so please do deposit any donations of author food in the comments.


End file.
